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Trans-Polar Aviation and Jurisdiction over Arctic Airspace*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Elmer Plischke
Elmer Plischke
Affiliation:
Ensign, United States Naval Reserve, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
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Extract

Current press articles and periodical literature, both in the United States and abroad, are manifesting a developing interest in trans-polar aviation and Arctic aërial jurisdiction. Although this interest in Arctic airspace appears to be conceived in the exigencies of the present world conflict, belief in the practicability of air routes traversing the Arctic Basin and joining the great centers of civilization of the two hemispheres was expressed as long ago as shortly after the First World War. Perhaps most vocal of the exponents is the polar explorer and publicist Vilhjalmur Stefansson, who began to stress the positional significance of the Arctic almost twenty years ago.

Meanwhile the feasibility of polar aviation was demonstrated in actual practice. Following a series of experimental flights by dirigible and plane—and once the urge to attain the North Pole via the air materialized in the successful flights of Richard E. Byrd, Roald Amundsen-Lincoln Ellsworth, and Umberto Nobile in 1926 and 1928—polar flying concentrated largely upon the spanning of the Atlantic and Pacific aërial highways between the two hemispheres.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 37 , Issue 6 , December 1943 , pp. 999 - 1013
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1943

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References

1 The Adventure of Wrangel Island (N. Y., 1925), passim, and “The Resources of the Arctic and the Problem of Their Utilization,” in Joerg, W. L. G. (ed.), Problems of Polar Research (N. Y., American Geographical Society, 1928).Google Scholar

2 For good summaries of the development of polar flying, see Joerg, , Problems of Polar Research, and Brief History of Polar Exploration Since the Introduction of Flying (N. Y., American Geographical Society, 1930)Google Scholar; and Hayes, J. Gordon, The Conquest of the North Pole: Recent Arctic Exploration (N. Y., 1934).Google Scholar

3 This polar projection is briefly explained and graphically illustrated in “Maps—Global War Teaches Global Cartography,” Life, Aug. 3, 1942, pp. 67–65, and is utilized in the preparation of several current maps, such as the Insert in Fortune (Mar., 1942) and the wall chart Polar Aëronautical World, ed. by Trewartha, Glenn T. and published by A. J. Nystrom and Co. (1942).Google Scholar

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8 Colegrove, op. cit., pp. 5, 6.

9 A host of pre-war conferences are listed in Tombs, Laurence C., International Organization in European Air Transport (N. Y., 1936), p. 4, n. 4Google Scholar; for an account of the work and achievements of these conferences, see Colegrove, op. cit., Chap. 3.

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14 Fenwick, op. cit., p. 288; also see Naval War College, “Jurisdiction and Polar Areas,” International Law Situations, 1937 (Wash., D. C., 1939), Situation 3, p. 125.Google Scholar

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17 Arts. 1, 2, 15, 21, 32.

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22 Art. 2; Amer. Jour. of Internal. Law, supp. Vol. 24, pp. 184, 239 (1930).

23 Hudson, “Aviation and International Law,” loc. cit., p. 236. For a list of these treaties to 1930, see Amer. Jour. of Internat. Law., supp., Vol. 24, pp. 161–168 (1930); and for a critical discussion of the subject (see Tombs, op. cit., Chap. 5), which includes a list of bilateral agreements to 1935, pp. 101, 102.

24 44 U. S. Statutes at Large 568 ff., especially sec. 6, p. 572.

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30 Ibid.

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32 Zollmann, op. cit., p. 2.

33 Garner, op. cit., p. 146.

34 “The Law of the Airship,” loc. cit., p. 96.

35 Op. cit., p. 288.

36 Op. cit., pp. 340, 341.

37 “Aviation and International Law,” loc. cit., pp. 238–240.

38 International Law (Boston, 1922), I, pp. 326 ff.

39 International Law (N. Y., 1931), p. 58.

40 Op. cit., pp. 117, 119.

41 Op. cit., p. 3.

42 Op. cit., p. 146.

43 Jurisdiction of a littoral state over the airspace superjacent to its maritime waters was acknowledged at the 1930 Hague codification conference; see “Hague Codification of International Law: II. Territorial Waters,” Amer. Jour. of Internat. Law, supp., Vol. 24, p. 240, art. 2 (1930).

44 Naval War College, op. cit., p. 127.

45 Hudson, “Aviation and International Law,” loc. cit., p. 238.

46 Tombs, op. cit., p. 53.

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48 Hudson, “Aviation and International Law,” loc. cit., pp. 238, 239.

49 Air Commerce Act of 1926, sec. 6(c), 44 U. S. Statutes at Large, 572.

50 Tombs, op. cit., pp. 102, 103.

51 Edouard d'Hooghe, formerly president of the International Juridical Committee of Aviation, Droit Aérien (Paris, 1912)Google Scholar, is one of the few writers who are cognizant of this status; cited in Spaight, J. M., Aircraft in War (London, 1914), p. 140.Google Scholar

52 Hyde, Charles Cheney “Acquisition of Sovereignty Over Polar Areas,” Iowa Law Review, Vol. 19, pp. 289–292 (1934)Google Scholar; Naval War College, op. cit., p. 116; Smedal, Gustav, Acquisition of Sovereignty Over Polar Areas (Oslo, 1931), p. 54Google Scholar; Lakhtine, Vladimir Leont'evich, Prava na Severny Poliarny Prostranstva (Moscow, 1928), pp. 37, 38Google Scholar, as cited in Taracouzio, T. A., Soviets in the Arctic (N. Y., 1938), p. 321.Google ScholarLakhtine's, study was rewritten in English under the title “Rights Over the Arctic,” Amer. Jour. of Internat. Law, Vol. 24, pp. 703–717 (1930).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

53 Dominion of Canada, Senate Debates (1906–1907), p. 271. Although sectorism was subsequently relied upon by a number of Dominion officials, the Government of Canada has never based the legality of its pretensions to polar territory upon it, and neither the Canadian Parliament nor the Foreign Office has yet declared or implied its adherence to the principle.

54 “Political Rights in the Arctic,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 4, pp. 47–60 (Oct., 1925). This study was combined with another on “National Rights in the Antarctic,” Foreign Affairs (Apr., 1927), Vol. 5, pp. 508–510, and was then published as “Political Rights in the Polar Regions,” in Joerg, , Problems of Polar Research, pp. 235–250.Google Scholar

55 “Problema vozdushnoi okkupatsii v sviazi s pravom na poliarnye prostranstva” (Problems of Aërial Occupation in Connection with Rights in the Arctic), Voprosy Vozdushnogo Prava, 1: 104 ff.Google Scholar; “S. S. S. R. i Poliarnye Zemli” (The U. S. S. R. and the Land in the Arctic), Soveiskoe Pravo (1926) 3: 43 ff.Google Scholar; and “S. S. S. R. i Severnyi Polius” (The U. S. S. R. and the North Pole), Sovetskoe Pravo, Vol. 3, no. 3 (1929).Google Scholar

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57 Lakhtine presented his idea at greater length in Prava na Severnye Poliarnye Prostranstva, and in a summarized form in “Rights Over the Arctic,” loc. cit.

58 “Sovetskoe Pravo v Poliarnykh Prostranstvakh” (Soviet Law in the Arctic), Rabochii Sud (1928), p. 984 ff.Google Scholar

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63 Quoted in Taracouzio, , The Soviet Union and International Law, pp. 73–75.Google Scholar

64 Ibid., p. 76.

65 Lakhtine, “Rights Over the Arctic,” loc. cit., pp. 714, 715.

66 “Problema vozdushnoi okkupatsii v sviazi s pravom na poliarnye prostranstva,” loc. cit., cited in Taracouzio, Soviets in the Arctic, p. 361.

67 Ibid., p. 362.

68 Ibid.

69 Ibid., p. 364.

70 As a matter of fact, with the exception of the Soviet decree of 1926, it has not even been recognized in the municipal law of the Arctic states.

71 Taracouzio, Soviets in the Arctic, pp. 364, 365.

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